214 – Unleashing $Billions in Growth: Chief Partner Officer Secrets with Greg Sarafin

Greg Sarafin Joins Ultimate Partner®

In this episode, Greg Sarafin, Global Managing Partner—Alliance Ecosystem at EY, joins us to explore the pivotal role of the Chief Partner Officers, his career progression, and the dynamics of successful partnership and organizational leadership.

Discover how Greg oversees EY’s Alliance Partner Ecosystem, driving substantial growth and impact. He has contributed 40% to EY’s growth over the past six years, creating billions in revenue. With insights from his extensive experience, including leadership roles at IBM and BearingPoint, Greg shares invaluable perspectives on strategic partnerships, technology implementation, and leadership skills essential for C-suite roles.

Learn firsthand about the intersection of technology, business, and partnerships as Greg discusses the tech industry’s influence on GDP growth, AI value creation, and business process reengineering. Gain actionable insights into partner operations, cost management, and the profound impact of partnering functions on organizational success.

Tune in to uncover the secrets of effective partnering, leadership, and capital allocation in today’s rapidly evolving business landscape. Don’t miss this enlightening conversation with Greg Sarafin, a seasoned leader with a wealth of experience driving impactful partnerships and organizational growth.

What You’ll Learn 

1. Ecosystems and the role of the chief partner officer with EY’s Greg Serafin. 0:02
2. Career progression and leadership in the consulting industry. 1:49
3. Organizational structure and leadership in a global consulting firm. 6:55
4. Partner ecosystems and orchestration for client value. 12:49
5. Tech industry’s impact on GDP growth and AI value creation. 18:10
6. Business process reengineering and technology implementation. 21:57
7. Strategic partnerships in the tech industry. 26:11
8. Partnering function’s value in organizations. 32:26
9. Partnering and capital allocation in business. 41:06
10. Leadership skills for C-suite roles. 47:51
11. Partner operations and cost management. 54:08

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Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Many Typos

Keywords

partner, partnering, function, ecosystem, clients, ey, companies, creating, people, years, sap, organisation, big, sales, market, microsoft, tech, partnerships, outcome, gsi

Vince Menzione  00:02

Microsoft’s purpose is in service of your purpose. And again, 2024 is the year that partners come out as the leading edge of the spear. And on finding this buyer intent you show up to every meeting and demonstrate why you are relevant every day, I have to force myself to make sure that I’m taking one step ahead in terms of my own learning that flywheel success is where you will build momentum. And that momentum will continue and then you feed into the other systems to say, this is what we did. This is how we did it together. Welcome to or welcome back to The Ultimate Guide department, where our mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. I’m Vince menzi on your host, and today we have a really special guest here in our Boca facility. Greg Serafin is the global Managing Partner of alliances and ecosystems at EY, Ernst and Young, a multinational professional services partnership, and a thought leader on the topic of ecosystem and the role of the chief partner officer. Greg, I’m so excited to have you here today. Thanks, Vince. It’s good to be here. I am so excited to welcome you to Ultimate Partner you and I got to spend some time in Dallas, Texas, at our live event. And I so enjoyed your session with and it’s been such an incredible session on the chief partner Officer role. And I wanted to have you in the room because not just that topic, but we have several other topics, we want to talk to your leader at EY, you have been a leader in this movement around ecosystems. And so I’m so excited for this conversation today. But first, for our listeners that don’t know you, I was hoping you could spend a little bit of time on EY. Sure. Your role and the organisation that you lead. Yeah, absolutely. So

Greg Sarafin  01:49

I am part of the extended leadership team at EY. And I’ve had the great honour of being on that team for the last seven years. But I was just telling you before the podcast, I actually had my retirement, I’m retiring in June, and I don’t know how they could let you go. I don’t think it’s it’s actually a very hard rule. Right? We, you know, we want to continue the UN I agree with that. Actually, I’m like, you know, you gotta keep letting people advance. Right, exactly what we’re talking about politics before this. Right? Right. I’m still young for politics, I guess, already a time. Exactly, currently. So anyway, you know, ey for those that don’t know, is one of the big four. And all of us have both an audit business, a tax business, and then some set of consulting businesses as well. So we’re very broad in the services that we can bring to clients. And we’re very global, we have a particular place in society in terms of creating transparency of financial results, to give confidence to the public markets, which is a pretty tall task and important thing to do. Absolutely. It gives us a certain brand permission and trust, it gives us the ability to attract a certain level of talent, both out of university, as well as then later in life experienced hires. And so what you find when you get there, and I came there late in life that was 51 years old, when I joined the UI, I was an IBM executive before that, is just you are stung by not just the depth of talent, you know, people that are just world class, you know, in some sort of expertise, but then also world class as you know, relationship handlers or delivery people. And then there’s 380,000 of us around the world 380,000. And it’s huge. I was in attendance. I mean, seriously, it’s like, they’re all top people like, you know, you get goose bumps, you go to an EY meeting anywhere in the world. And there’s a consistent feel of consistent culture, commitment to client commitment to success. It’s unbelievable. Anyway, I want our people in the room I won’t I won’t dwell on about a why too much. But it’s been it’s been great to be part of you why I didn’t go to EY actually to, to be part of the ecosystem movement. Start there. I was at IBM where I also had a really good time and was also very fortunate have had a couple of good roles there. I was running a big part of the financial services business for them in North America. And so and then BearingPoint before that, before their implementation. Yeah, apparently for if we go through my career, we’re gonna be here we won’t No, no, we won’t do that. We will not do that. I sold my first deal. 41 years ago. I love it. I was in college. You are young money. Yeah, young buck away, you’ll you’ll you’ll appreciate this. So I needed to make money to pay tuition and room and board and so like, Well, I’m not gonna do that working at a bar or, you know, minimum wage jobs. It was it was I was at expensive college. Right. So

Vince Menzione  04:46

I love this. I sold a Novell NetWare implementation for law firm. Oh my goodness. Right. Isn’t that crazy? That’s when he PCs network them with token ring. I mean, I remember For those days, I remember that was my early days spent two days trying to figure out how to generate the operating system off of three and a half inch floppies. Are those Lucas? Yeah, yeah, remember those things? I do remember those? Oh my lord. Anyway, enough to remember that now I’m just aged myself.

Greg Sarafin  05:15

I’ve aged myself as well here.

Vince Menzione  05:18

So let’s fast forward again. So yeah, bearing points, IBM and n e n EY. And up until

Greg Sarafin  05:29

seven years ago, I was primarily financial services from hiring point forward. And so when two years into my EY tenure, they said, hey, you know, that plan for you to like, maybe run a big piece of financial services for us? We think we have something better for you to do I love every time you hear it’s gonna be better for you. You’re like, is it really better for me? Is it right? For us that it was because I never would have done it on my own. And I didn’t grow up in it. So I but I had always worked with partners. You know, I was at IBM, we did a lot with SAP and a lot with Oracle. Right. And financial services, and a lot of systems integration work with them. And I knew our three are Yeah, exactly. And I knew how to do ecc. I knew how to do sales motions with partners. I knew all that stuff. But from the running the business side, not from the partnering side, yes. Running the partner function side. So and if I’m honest, I’ve said this before publicly. I was like, Oh, my God, my career is over. I’m going to the indirect hell.

Vince Menzione  06:40

chemo, how was it was, you know, 10 years ago? Oh, something must have gone wrong with your career. You’re over and alliances now? Yeah, indirect revenue. That’s where we send people who can’t sell Exactly, that’s exactly was

Greg Sarafin  06:51

like, oh, everybody’s gonna think I’ve lost my ability to do deals and stuff, right. But in all seriousness, the reason I was asked, it wasn’t honoured actually, to be asked. Because EY had done a lot of work at the board level, and had determined that this was a huge gap for the company. And not just for the company, but for our clients, right, our clients expect, particularly those of us that are in the Big Four, to help them navigate their most difficult journeys, and to orchestrate a set of partners to help them do that. Not to say, well go Good luck working with Microsoft, your old job, or SAP or have ever been like working with them. No, we’re going to bring all that together for you. And we’re going to translate, we’re gonna take you on a business outcome journey. And of course, you can’t get any business outcome of any merit today without what tack?

Vince Menzione  07:40

That’s right. And this, and you’re in the transformation business. Right. And then we are, we are celebrated transformation. So you got right at the right time?

Greg Sarafin  07:48

We Yes, I did. I did get there at the right time. So we were at the time, you know, this is all public information. We were $33 billion network of firms at the time. And we were doing less than a billion dollars, raise the partner that all the dogs are looking at, you’re looking at it really gonna be like, what was going on there? Exactly. But you know, remember, ey had spun off its consulting business back in the early aughts. And they’ll they built it back. Because we audit a lot of technology companies at EY. A lot of people thought, well, it doesn’t make sense to try to do alliances, because we audit, you know, many, the hyper scalars, Amazon and Google and by the way, I’m glad we do. Yeah. It’s an important role to play. Absolutely. You know, I’m not one of those people that says, Well, you know, audits, something we shouldn’t do, which is absolutely, it’s a privilege to be able to do audits, for sure. We’re very fortunate that we’ve been given that licence. And so what did though is gave me a very short

Vince Menzione  08:46

palette to work with. Who was left at hyperscalers. That boy, I just so I,

Greg Sarafin  08:51

we have we have Microsoft? Yeah. And the hyperscalers and we have sap in the Europese. We have Dell for the you know, the mega tech OEM platforms. And we have ServiceNow for so if you if you think about it, right. The ones we don’t happen to audit historically turned out to be the category leaders and each of their sandwich the unicorns in many ways, right? Right. Right. So we so it turned out that we had the best of both worlds, we were providing assurance services to some of the most important companies on the planet. But we also still got to work with some of the other most important companies in planning, they happen to be number one in their position. So it actually kind of really worked out well.

Vince Menzione  09:33

So tell me about your organisation that we were talking about this a little bit before we started recording the size of the organisation, how are you organised for success? Because you’ve got this massive organisation global organisation, how do you aggregate the function and the team?

Greg Sarafin  09:49

Yeah, so first of all, you’re you came from a company that was pretty massive and complicated, too. So I

Vince Menzione  09:55

talked about McKenzie with you, McKinsey.

Greg Sarafin  09:59

So Yeah, I mean, for those that don’t know, Big Four, because of of regulation are their partnerships. They can’t be corporations, and they

Vince Menzione  10:11

is a by country?

Greg Sarafin  10:12

Is that how it works? Essentially by country? That’s right. Each country has its own franchise. So you can think of it that way. And then there’s a central entity in our case, ey global that owns EY brand, facilitates the UI network does the shared services for the member firms, but each member firm is still an independent operating entity. Yeah. So when you think about that, from the perspective of you just got a global roll, and you’re supposed to make things happen across 160 member firms? It’s like, how’s that gonna work? It was one of the early things I started to think about, like, how am I going to do that a huge influence strategy. And there’s, there’s a lot of influence, of course, I mean, even in regular top down corporation, you still have got to get people to care enough to allocate their resource to do something for the greater good isn’t necessarily what they’re doing today. Right? There’s always a change management element to any thing that disrupts what people do, in terms of their muscle memories. So there was certainly a lot of change management. But also we thought about it in a very structured way. So I’m, uh, those people that know me and work with me, I’m, I’m very, I’m like an operating partner. Okay. I’m very operational in how I think and engineering background. Exactly. I’m an engineering background. You know, I was telling you before the cast, you know, my, my degree, I had to build a PC from scratch on a wire wrap on a motherboard, you know, the chips and everything right. I had to programme the operating system, the monitor the operating system. I did a Pascal compiler there. I dated myself again. Wow, how it was less than anybody working past? Yeah. Oh, my Lord. So it was one of the top languages when I went to school. It was it was a great it was an education language, right? Yes. And so anyway, so I’m a hardcore engineer. And also, I’m just a connector right i, to me, I see the world about how things connect. Nice. And so that’s, that’s sort of the that’s sort of the way I structure and go after things. And so I joke with people, I went from engineering because, you know, first 20 years of my career, I was doing actual implementations, right? Where there was building Novell networks and infrastructure clients, where they’re doing custom software for them. Right. I had management. Yeah, I did project delivery, certainly. So but always tech related. And then I just said, you know, I can do the same thing and go to market. Very interesting. So I have thought about go to market for 20 years, because that’s I flipped to the go to market side. And I’ve used my engineering thinking, say, how would I engineer the outcome? That would, would be the ideal outcome, working from the client back. So many organisations they worked with, they work, they work their go to market from the inside out, we’ve got all these products and services we need to sell, huh? All right, we got all these clients out here will segment will like, what? Like, okay, that that works. But what if you flipped it? What if you said, Okay, what am I clients need, not necessarily what I have in my toolbox, but what do they need? That is what is in my toolbox actually helps them get to. Okay, now that I’m not, I understand what they actually need. Okay, maybe my toolbox doesn’t have everything they need. But if I think about how I can bring my tools plus the tools of others and orchestrate that outcome for the client, maybe that will get me a higher share of wallet as any given market. And it turns out, that’s been true for 20 years and different roles that I’ve had. And so the end was that mindset, actually, plus a very operational that that’s what we brought to how we thought about partnering. It was It wasn’t sell what you got, or hey, I’ll sell your stuff. You sell my stuff. It was like what a client’s need, what are they trying to get to? And how can what we have and maybe some other people have helped orchestrate that. To create that that value that doesn’t exist anywhere

Vince Menzione  14:10

like this is like a symbol I can’t wait to dive in more on this conversation because connector and orchestrator to two verbs that come to mind for me as well. And so I love your back. We’re gonna peel back here on how you how you did this across the Absolutely, yeah. And in fact you’ve been talking about, we had Jay McBain here just download Jay like two weeks ago. And you know, he’s he’s coined this term decade of the ecosystem. Yes, I’m aware. But you’ve been talking about ecosystem I think even longer than Jay is I think someone told me that they saw you speak about ecosystem maybe maybe four or five years ago. In fact, actually

Greg Sarafin  14:44

I started posting with the hashtag ecosystem value realised in 2018. Wow. And, and part of that was because I was trying to reposition in a way from Alliance Right, because the lines first of all is well as worse. It has a lot of baggage. Yeah, I don’t like alliances. I don’t like it either. Second of all, it’s not an alliance. It’s a it’s a multi party value creating, creating enterprise. It’s partnership, right. It’s partnerships to create value. Right? You can have an alliance agreement, which is a type of a contract, it’s not, you know, so I rebranded to partner EPA system, six years ago, and then I even wrote an article back in 20, about seven business models, right? Because Because partnering is not just one business model, right? There’s a lot of different ways to partner marketplaces are huge way to partner. And you’re very familiar with that. But then, you know, you also have what we call the symbiotic model, which is the joint go to market cosell motions that the tech companies tend to do with the big S eyes. And you know, I will take you through all seven. But you get the point, right? I do. I do. And so I tried to get away from alliances and more to what it was about, which was, we have this ecosystem of partners that we can orchestrate to create value for our clients. That was what I was trying to reposition it to the outcomes to the outcome, because everybody why when I first came in the role when I would talk to them, it’s like, we don’t sell software. I’m like, Yeah, we’re not asking you to sell software. That’s, that’s not our business model. There are plenty companies that sell software, right, their channel partners to Microsoft, we’re not a channel partner to Microsoft. We are a strategic partner to Microsoft, we create strategic value for our clients that we can’t create alone, nor can Microsoft read alone. But together we can. And so it was that constant repositioning of it and reminding people that look, at the end of the day, what I say doesn’t matter. Ask Your Client, what they want. Look at where your clients are spending money today. They’re spending money predominantly with partners that orchestrate outcomes for them. Yes. That’s what they’re spending the money, right? That’s right. So forget me, I don’t matter. Pay attention to your client over there. That’s that’s who matters. So it’s

Vince Menzione  17:01

become a movement, right? I talked to Jay about the decade of the ecosystem and this ecosystem movement. There’s a lot of debate around it. Is it a ecosystem is a multiple ecosystems? How do you think through that?

Greg Sarafin  17:12

So I realised about three years and I realised, oh, darn. ecosystem is one of those words where first of all, a lot of people think about the ecosystem of the ocean, right? Or the ecosystem of the desert, because most people when they first heard that word, it was a middle school. Yeah, in science class. It’s just kind of icky biology. Remember, exactly. It’s like a biology where it’s so right away. It’s got some baggage. And then, like you said, you know, some people use the word to mean like an industry ecosystem, like all the participants in the value chain of health care. Yes. Right. Yes. Others use it more like, here’s the set of partners who we work with, specifically. Right? Right. And then there are other variations of us, too. So we call it a partner ecosystem, to say these are our partners, and there’s a bunch of them. And that is a tremendous resource for us to draw upon to figure out new ways of creating value for clients. And

Vince Menzione  18:10

I would argue that your ecosystem is a subset of the total ecosystem in tech.

Greg Sarafin  18:16

Oh, a very small subset of the ecosystem and tech, its massive. Yeah,

Vince Menzione  18:21

I think about I always refer to the Bill Gates moment. And the fact that when he came down here to Boca Raton in 1981, and signed the agreement with IBM, he licenced the software didn’t sell it, right? Remember the old days. So hardware and software were intertwined, it was still sold directly? Yep, sometimes through an agent. But that created this massive movement. And with the work you did with Novell was in a great example, all these other all this other value, got it add to the chain, and we took PCs, and we took everything out, and then ultimately to the cloud. But if you look, to me, it’s like it’s the same ecosystem of all these companies Ultra. This $5 trillion industry that we have

Greg Sarafin  18:57

maybe like the technology ecosystem around the world is creating is unlocking GDP growth. I mean, how much of our GDP growth is really because of these tech companies?

Vince Menzione  19:06

What would you say this? We have a rough number on it.

Greg Sarafin  19:09

I don’t know, I’m not an economist. I don’t have data. But I mean, just, you know, just looking at it, looking at the value our customers are creating for their customers, and thus the their contribution to GDP. Tac is probably more than 50% of the engine of GDP now and most at least, certainly in many markets. And I think it’s growing, especially with the new AI, new ai ai stack and, and we’re just at the beginning of that journey. It’s crazy where that’s going Satya

Vince Menzione  19:40

says $4 trillion in value creation through AI.

Greg Sarafin  19:45

Yeah, and that’s probably on the low as early definitely.

Vince Menzione  19:48

I’m so excited to continue our partnership with ag one. Many of you know I’ve made taking a green drink supplement part of my health ritual for over 21 years now. You It has made all the difference to my health and well being about six years ago, athletic greens and now their product ag one became my go to supplement. Ag one is the first thing I take every morning to power my day. It covers all of my nutritional bases, supports my gut health gives a boost to my immunity and energy levels. If you want to take ownership of your health, try ag one and get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to drink ag one.com forward slash Vinson that’s drink ag one.com forward slash Vinson, check them out. So let’s let’s shift back into UI for a second because I have this maybe it’s a false notion about the big S eyes, the big global s eyes, that they they’re, they’re hired because of that one throat to choke right there, the organisation that comes in, in the I call it almost the old model, but you think about it differently. Yeah, I was hoping you could kinda absolutely share your point of view on it, you

Greg Sarafin  21:06

know, so first of all, there is value in what I’ll call a, you know, a base CIT GSI. Right? So maybe you’re not hiring them to help you drive a transformation, the finance function, you just want them to put it in the plumbing and the engine of SAP, right? You want to do your SAP upgrade, because that’s one point on that big project. Like, yeah, exactly. And you know, that they have both the, you know, the talent arbitrage and the expertise to do these projects better than you will, or you’re gonna go out and hire a bunch of people are experts in implementing SAP, and then we’re gonna fire them all now. Exactly. So these, these, these organisations exist for a reason. And the ones that are good at it also realised something a long time ago, which is, most most large technical implementation projects don’t fail because of the people turning the wrenches. They, they fail because the business people, the client don’t do what they said they right do, right? That’s the truth. And so they got very good at, you know, muscling clients to do the right thing. Right, they use change orders and other mechanisms to do it. But so and there’s always been this sort of dance, right. And we certainly participate in that. But we’re unlikely as a big four, to compete against a pure GSI on array per hour. That’s, that’s not a, that’s not a smart thing for us to do. And we plan on going away many, and it’s not a business model, our business model is to start with the finance function and the CFO to say, what is the future of finance in the insurance industry or in the telco industry, or whatever the industry is, so bring that perspective to the CFO to say this is, here’s what here’s the regulatory agenda you may be faced with, here’s what AI is now going to do, like we bring them sort of this is this is where your function needs to go next, right in order to help be stewards of the business to help the business navigate all this change. And for you to do that your current technology platform is not going to get you there, nor your current business processes, or maybe even your functional alignment. So

Vince Menzione  23:12

this is the business process reengineering. This is the business.

Greg Sarafin  23:15

Yeah, in even the business function reengineering. In some cases, it’s even above process, but processes, certainly part of it. And then there’s the change management to get from your current state your future state. And then part of it to me part of the change management is swapping out the tech. Yeah, yeah, right. And a lot of go, it’s not always, it’s not the last piece, and in many respects, it’s the enabling piece. But if they don’t do the work to change the, if they put in this great new S for HANA implementation, and then they just keep using it the same way they’re using ECC, or three, what did they what did they crave as return on shareholder equity? They didn’t, they didn’t know anything up there. So that’s why we always, like I said, we focus on what’s the outcome you’re trying to get even helping you define what that outcome is? What’s the change journey you need to take help you take that change journey, and part of that is also swapping out the tech. Yeah. So

Vince Menzione  24:09

this is where ecosystem comes in for you, right? Because I think ecosystem is a clump of a bunch of companies surrounding a customer, and then pulling through. But in your case, you’re coming in doing business processes, function reengineering. And then you’re saying, Okay, this is the cadre of tools or solutions that you need to in order to drive what we needed the outcome,

Greg Sarafin  24:32

and it’s never one thing, it’s never just SAP. You still need the host that SAP somewhere and hyper scalar. And if you’re hosting in a hyper scalar, how can you get some leverage from the tools in their stack, right to bring leverage to the enablement of the functions, right? And then no platform has 100% of the functionality needed for any one function. So do you you bring a black line and for some reason ions in the financial clothes processes? Or do you bring in UiPath for for automating some of the more mundane tasks that are performed by accounting personnel or, or right, so, you you now we still have sales motions, we still partner with SAP, we still ultimately when we, when we take a client on this journey, we’re best served if we’re bringing SAP with us on that journey with the client and any other participants. And it’s where I go to the orchestrator, right? So if we were just a regular GSI, we would be okay, we’ve you know, we’re gonna partner with SCP, we’re gonna attack all these different clients and go through a sales motion to try to win some percentage of them. And then we’re gonna just wrench turn SAP and all these jobs, right? And that’s a bilateral sales motion. And it’s about how you need to implement it, where the best implement it. And here we are. And again, there’s clients that want to consume that way. Sure. But for us, it’s different we what’s the journey? And then who are the partners that we’re bringing, that we work with, to get you there faster, safer, better. But

Vince Menzione  26:11

I think I hear in what you’re describing on your approach is more of a mindset change. You talk about orchestrator, you talk about collaboration, as opposed to prime sub roles that you see often in the AI world. Yeah, we

Greg Sarafin  26:29

don’t we prime sub is a commercial construct that occasionally a client will insist upon. But our preference is like you have a relationship with your technology vendor way longer than you have a relationship with your SI will page in and out over the course of time, you’re gonna use SAP consistently, every year, year over year, right. So those are, that’s a different type of relationship. So you should have a commercial relationship with SAP and a commercial relationship with EY. But don’t put them on one paper unless you really have to, or need to got it. So we don’t, but we will prime sub if a client insists that we do. And then we also don’t use the word channel. Yeah, you know, channel, tell me why you don’t use it. Because channel is just an alternative cost of sales. Yeah. Transactional as well? Well, it’s more, it’s yes, it is transactional. But at the end of the day, to me, you use channel two to have a more efficient cost of sales, either because it’s a geography you don’t want to build a field sales office in, or it’s a particular segment of the market, that’s too expensive for your field sales to go after, to reach. So to me, it’s generally a surface area play. And instead of in your cost of sales, instead of it being a commission that you pay to your sellers, its margin that you’re sharing with the channel partner. So to me, that is a completely different thing that is that is sale selling through an alternate sales model. We’re creating value right through the orchestration, or the orchestration and the CO investment, because we also will often invest with our partners to create unique assets and tools that accelerate that client’s journey that they can’t get from another combination of partners. So Greg, you’ve been a thought leader in this ecosystem movement, as we refer to it now, like, why is it a strategic imperative? And

Vince Menzione  28:27

what would you say to other s eyes or other organisations similar to EY analogous to EY, what they need to go do better differently?

Greg Sarafin  28:35

So I’m gonna take it up from the world of tech and SI, because I believe this movement is much bigger than that. I know that because there’s a natural affinity for tech and and consultancies, you partner for four decades now, if you think about it, and that Bill Gates moment, right, exactly. And so and the reason for that is that clients, if they just adopt technology, and they don’t get business value, or value realisation, I think is the word we typically use, right? What was the point of spending the money on technology, so you, you you hire consultants to aid make sure you don’t screw up the implementation, because that’s easy enough to do and never happened? It’s never happens. And then, but more importantly, hopefully, you then adopt it and use it for a business purpose that return shareholder value, client value, employee value, stakeholder value, right, right. You want value creation from having deployed capital on op X to put in this deck. And so there’s been a natural synergy, but there are partnering models all over like every industry has its version of partnering models, they’re just very different by industry. Right? If you look at consumer products, they do a lot of partnerships. They do a lot of cross licencing. They do co branding, right? They do supply chain sharing, or they do a lot of things that are partnering models that are value creative to their end customer But don’t look like the way that we partner between si and tech companies automotive, automotive was massive partner at massive partner yellers tech dealer. Exactly. Now you’re getting to play in my in my, that’s another partnership with Bose stereo Yeah, Brembo brakes, you ever Carosi of BorgWarner transmission? Right? Those are all those were all supply relationships that turned into value relationships, and even co brand relationships in some cases, right? So let’s take it up a level. The reason it’s the decade of ecosystem is because partnering is more capital efficient, in many value vectors, the path to getting to a particular outcome for a client, if you try to do it within the four walls of your company, you probably don’t have enough capital or time to get there, you are speaking my language. So you need to combine your capital. And when I say capital, I mean it broadly. I don’t just mean money, resources, resources, IP, access to customers access to supply, how big is that today, that’s your route to supply is one of the most highly valued data is another highly valuable one, especially with AI, right? So to me, the reason it is the decade of echo system isn’t because what we’re doing in our little world of SI and tech, it is because Tech has taken down the barrier to interoperability between companies. I love that. And AI takes it down even further. You can in cloud and you again, you come from a very famous cloud company, right? How much value did Microsoft cloud on lock, not because people move their workload from a data centre to the cloud, it turns out that might actually be more expensive. The value unlock, is when multiple companies can form these really valuable value propositions, for no cost of interrupting the marketplace is driving it even further, the marketplace creates an accelerant seamless. So to me, the biggest thing that Microsoft is doing economically and its peers is it’s unlocking the ability for companies to pull capital together and new value creation models. And that is why it is the decade of echo system. Because and you’re gonna see this in every industry, we already are seeing it in every industry. And here’s the good news. And I dropped the mic now, if you are listening to this, and you are and you’re like me and events and others who have been banging our heads against the wall, a lot right here. Right, write it, you know, you’re into direct sales, etc. All of a sudden, you’re entering a decade, where your worth, to pharma companies and energy companies and automobiles, you’re there, they need you. Yes, because they need to try to figure out how to do this, because they don’t have what we have, which is experienced doing partner operations, partner governance, partner relationship handling, and go to market motions. So they don’t have any that experience or know, they don’t know. And the people listening to this do. And I’m telling you, more than half of you in 10 years will not be in tech or GSI.

Vince Menzione  33:21

Right? We’re gonna help the transformation of the rest of the world. Right. Yeah, I see that as well. I talked to and that is why yesterday about this very same topic. So let’s dive in here. The the talk that you gave in my event was around the CPO which were the chief partner officer new term, by the way, although I think you you’ve been exposing the benefits and the value of this. I think about your organisation, I love the talk you gave. And I also think having been on both sides, having been at the Microsoft and then in the billion dollar ISV where these things don’t necessarily happen as easily. What do you think about when you think about the chief partner Officer role, its value and where it needs to sit in an organisation?

Greg Sarafin  34:06

Yeah, so I actually flip it on its side. So I believe that for companies to pull, allocate capital, create new value vectors, and then drive go to market at scale. They need to have a partnering function. Yes, you’re speaking my language. You don’t have a partnering function, you’re not doing that function, not just a bolt on. Thank you a function, not just a bolt on. And in many companies, it’s a bolt on many. And it’s actually a go to market bolt on. That’s just not a value creation bolt on

Vince Menzione  34:42

based on where it sits in the organisation right.

Greg Sarafin  34:44

So you need a function and that function just like the finance function, or the tax function or the HR function, the supply chain function is an L zero function of the company and and it is a stored of a set of business processes. Yes.

Vince Menzione  35:04

It’s a steward of the processes say that, uh processes from hell yes. Take us through them. So,

Greg Sarafin  35:11

first of all, as you know, partnering touches every internal every other internal function in the company. That’s right. It can alter rev Rec. It can alter your tax position. It can alter your capital position. For the for the better, hopefully. It changes how you think about marketing and branding. Right now you’re co branding, multi branding. What does that Yeah, right. So

Vince Menzione  35:40

so far, you’ve touched the CFOs. Office and the CMOS office. Oh, by

Greg Sarafin 35:44

the way, if you’re partnering, you’re creating interoperability. Now you’ve created a nightmare for the CIO. Because the CIO now has got to worry about cybersecurity. Yeah, through all these other threat vectors. That’s right. Right. You’re no longer it’s no longer the it within your organisation is the it across your organisation and the partners that you’re working with? Like and I could go on every day, trust me, we’ve done this every arrow function, we didn’t get Avenue. Oh, my God, you have any avenue? Your go to market? Complete? Your product function?

Vince Menzione  36:11

Yes.

Greg Sarafin  36:12

Are you engineering a product to be complete? Or you engineering a product to be the digital core? Non back to tech? Right? Yes. Are you? Are you? Are you engineering your product to be the digital core? And then your your partner ecosystem does the last mile around it? Because as that core gets bigger, you know that it goes by the square of the radius, right? So your cost of making that too big? You can’t you don’t have the capital, right? So you can only take that core as far as you want the minimum viable core. And then you want your partner ecosystem to fill in the last mile around it. That is your ideal scenario. So your product strategy has got to be informed by your partner and go to market strategy. Right. So

Vince Menzione  36:51

is this the conversation you had at the C suite? at EY?

Greg Sarafin  36:55

Not a one. No. It doesn’t work that way. How did it work? On I haven’t even gotten to the intercompany process yet. All right. Let me let me come back to me eager. So, so So yeah, so you, you know, we won’t use this podcast to describe what all these processes are. I’m actually, I’m actually probably going to work. I’ll probably publish some of my thoughts about what these processes are in my dotage, but the point is, there are places you can go today. And you know what it was? You’re an expert in these processes, right? So you’ve got these processes that are intra company processes that affect every other function in the company. Yes, but then you have the inter company processes from hell. We talked about this before the cash, right, your old company and my company are to the largest, most complicated beasts in the world. And you know, let’s say Johnson and AMD go, Hey, guys, we want to do this thing and energy and you know, a lot of like, and it takes them 30 seconds, you know, stroke of the pan, we’re gonna go do this, and then it gets it then who’s to get handed to you, it gets handed the partner organisations, for us to then try to figure out oh, my God, there’s, there’s 12 corporate functions, or, you know, there’s 12 entities within Microsoft and 32 within EY. And then like, Oh, my Lord, you need a calculator to figure it out sometimes. Yeah. Right. So I joke a little bit, but you know, just how hard that is to

Vince Menzione  38:23

do. And I call it maniacal focus, right, you get from the kumbaya you get from the vision. Oh, yeah. Like that trickle down to the OKRs. And then you got to get into execution. Yeah.

Greg Sarafin  38:32

And the execution this, too. That’s a lot. Right, which is why you only do big motions. Yes, you do that, right. Because, right, because the cost of sales is is too high otherwise, right? And that’s one thing I’ll spend the organisation and multi have directions such right and easily you get, you know, my rule is you with any partner, what are the five motions that matter that are gonna get you to 80% of your value creation revenue, and just focus on those because each motion has a hurdle cost is a very large hurdle cost. And so you can’t spin up 20 of them.

Vince Menzione  39:04

So what is your guidance? Other organisations this is a this by the way, this is considered a new role, right? There are it’s you’re saying it’s the at the top level, the L zero level?

Greg Sarafin  39:14

Yeah. And it’s considered a it’s like you say every company has some form of partnering today. But it lives in it’s a bolt onto a difference. There’s a channel chief, there’s an alliances leader, there’s multiple alliances strategic supply chain lead. In the case of automotive, there might be a marketing function, that is business development and energy. Yeah, a lot of its jayvees Yes, yes. So and then there’s some there’s some businesses that are I call, you know, partner, partner native like Airbnb and Uber and all those folks, right, that just are there orchestrators, their value orchestrators. And they bring together a bunch of participants to trade and receive value for which they take their piece. Yes. So And do they have partnering functions? I don’t? I don’t know. Are they just partnering entities?

Vince Menzione  40:04

Yeah, I think they’re just partnering, partnering, they’re almost like Mark, they’re marketplaces in many respects. So yeah, those those models I would agree with, those are markup, I look at Microsoft, or Amazon’s marketplace, or Google’s marketplace right now, I’d say it’s more analogous to that,

Greg Sarafin 40:16

I would agree. So. So partnering is, is that every company, it’s a small p partnering, it’s not big P partnering, right, it’s not an L zero function. And you’re not allowing all the different types of partnering mechanisms, if you just keep small p partnering, and you’re never gonna be able to scale it, if you’re small p partnering, if you really want to scale, you’re gonna have to, you’re gonna have to raise it to an L zero function. And then L zero functions have an officer that are accountable to the board and the CEO for the efficacious execution of that function and contribution to key KPIs of the company.

Vince Menzione  40:56

And how do you get there? Like, what is that function? What does that function look like? And what are the attributes of that function?

Greg Sarafin 41:02

So that function has a number of layers to it. So there is a governance layer. And the governance is in part a governance into the capital allocation process. So how are we allocating our capital? And let’s not think about capital allocation as just deploying our resources? I call it I had this saying I use I say, you know, companies need to make a pivot from the, the economics of scarcity. The Economics of abundance. Mindset, it is a mindset. It’s very much a mindset. And that mindset can have it can be night and day. Yes. The the impact of which side of that mindset you fall on, because if you’re in the economics of scarcity, it’s like, me, me, me, my, here’s my capital, my people, my resources, I’m going to deploy them as effectively as I can to outmuscle my competition. That’s right. That’s the old mindset is the old mindset. Yeah. Right. Whereas the new mindset is, I have asset value and asset classes. I have all these other entities out there who I can work with who also has asset value in asset classes. And I’ve got customers out here who I’ve permission to help on a particular to a particular outcome. That’s right. Jeff Bezos understood that better than anybody he didn’t. He did. He did. Right. And Satya Nadella and Satya Nadella to the to the great towers of CEOs in history, right. So they understood that. And so both of those companies are masters at delivering the outcomes that we want, either in our personal lives or professional lives, we’re both and not just saying, what are what of my assets am I going to deploy? How am I going to orchestrate a lot of different assets to get you to that outcome? Yes. So right away, you have to govern decisions about capital allocation, about who you partner with and don’t partner with because here’s another one for you. More is not more know. In channel even in channel ation, right? More is dilution. Yeah, less is more. That’s right. Who are you strategics should be very few of those. And then who are your specifics? The ones that your partner is because they have a very specific thing. It’s not strategic as relationship overall, but you still need that asset class. And they’re the most logical provider that asset class.

Vince Menzione  43:35

You’re taking us through a masterclass. By the way, just say, if you didn’t know this already, I’m partnering. You’re, you’re touching so many faces. I love this. It’s,

Greg Sarafin  43:44

we all live it. But we haven’t elevated it to the relevance to the C suite. Yes. And

the decisions get made. And it has to be at the C suite level,

Greg Sarafin  43:55

it does basic. ever go back to what I said at the beginning. Don’t listen to what I say. Listen to what clients say. And look at what people buy, again, people in their personal lives, people in their roles as corporate buyers of some service or product. They want the outcome, but

Vince Menzione  44:14

it doesn’t sit there now. So how do we overcome it?

Greg Sarafin  44:20

So it does sit there in some instances, but I but I agree it’s fewer than fewer than it should be by a longshot. So

Vince Menzione  44:27

how do we do that?

Greg Sarafin 44:30

Well, I think it starts with First of all, I think it will happen. And this one I think will happen. It was the discussion we just had a few minutes ago, as companies realised, oh my God, I need to have an abundance, economics mindset. And I need to be able to think about capital allocation and value creation broader than just what I have within my four walls. They will realise maybe some faster than others that this is no longer a bolt on as you said earlier right there. is a core competency of the enterprise from decision making, all the way down to execution? And I think you’re seeing the secular trend now. There are there are more chief partner officers named every day

Vince Menzione  45:18

through, I just want to make sure that that is where it needs to sit, or is it just in title only, that’s the other

Greg Sarafin  45:23

piece I’d like so many chief partner officers are actually chief channel officers, or they are Chief Business Development Officers, or they are whatever they are, right, they are not actually running an L zero function of the company. They’re not in the C suite discussions. And again, I think it will get there. And I think economics will drive it there. Yeah. It’s just can we help ourselves by elevating this conversation? Right. And, and in, frankly, also elevating the understanding of what a partner function does? Because it is the of all the like, now if you ask the average person, they actually understand the difference between FPN A, and you know, basic accounting? No, they probably don’t know. Right? Or indirect tax from direct? No, they don’t. Yeah, for some reason, partnering doesn’t get that break. It’s like, we don’t know what you do. We don’t trust you. Why are you spending all that money? Where’s it going? Right, the least understood function is terrible. It’s just, I feel sorry for everybody listening right now. I feel sorry for myself. That actually, I don’t feel sorry for myself, because, well, how

Vince Menzione  46:37

did you get? How did you get from point A to point B, maybe that helps in you know, form, it starts

Greg Sarafin  46:42

with measurement. I realised very early on that. Yep. We all know people are belief driven. And so if I’m, if I’m in a system of belief that says, We shouldn’t be partnering, we can’t partner. Partnering doesn’t matter. And if we do partner is too expensive, we’re not getting the value, right? All those negative things. And we’re all familiar with those sorts of attitudes that are companies. So the first thing you need to do is say, Okay, this is why we partner, we owe partner because we’re trying to make money from Microsoft, right? Wanting to partner because we’re trying to make more money for ourselves necessarily. We’re partnering so we’re relevant to our clients. So you start there, right? You keep going guys, look at the market. Look at the secular trends in the market. This is happening. Look at the most valuable companies on the planet, and then go down a layer and say, Why are they most valuable? Why is Microsoft most valuable company on the planet? Because it unlocks capital value creation,

Vince Menzione  47:49

growth mindset,

Greg Sarafin  47:53

growth mindset.

Vince Menzione  47:54

I go back to this there were the bomber days. Scarcity Mindset. Satie comes in the first thing we do is we all get the book Mindset by Carol Dweck. First thing he did really changed the mindset of the organisation. Last year, a masterclass, right, you talked, we talked about valuation, right. We don’t have all the assets, we’re not going to compete in all markets. That’s how we change the mindset. We’re going to partner where we don’t have the right assets, abundance, abundance. And Sam Altman, right, open AI, what did he do? partnered with them? And then last year, he helped. I mean, he, he shepherded the he shepherded through some pretty whether it was a rocky road or turbulent water. It was there was a crazy time there for for a brief moment.

Greg Sarafin  48:43

Yes, but look how he calm those waters very quickly on them down.

Vince Menzione  48:47

It’s amazing.

Greg Sarafin  48:49

I think he liked Elon shine a storm up a little bit again. These these giants of industry, you know how they are sometimes

Vince Menzione  48:56

very, very different, characteristically,

Greg Sarafin  48:59

although both both tremendous value creators credible,

Vince Menzione  49:02

incredible growth. What about the characteristics or attributes? What would you say is the ideal attributes if you could pick them? I mean, we could point to you, potentially. But what do you think for a leader in this role? If I’m the CEO? Who should I lean on? What’s the characteristics and the type of individual that I need to bring on to my C suite? Yeah, in order to be successful in this role? So

Greg Sarafin  49:27

I think it has to be someone who has a rather a unicorn ish set of skills, not because they’re inherently that way. They’re just by dumb luck. They ended up that way, frankly. And I just it was dumb luck that I ended up that way, right? What we’re going to need to do going forward is is purposely create people where people have to curate their careers to develop this sort of unicorn or set of skills. It is a university curriculum, you could actually and certainly, you know what to call a career path that ignition, if you want to be a chief partner officer, if you want to be a CFO, you go big four, right. And then at some point, you make partner young, you come over your BS, you know, a controller or FP and a and then you work your way to CFO and like, so you know what that path and you know, the different parts of the finance function that you need to master are pretty well defined. It is and you know what it was, and you know, what all the things you have to master are within the finance function as well, you have all the different things that you need to be to be a CFO, you need to understand all of the underlying components of running finance, right, right.

Vince Menzione  50:37

Cmo the same way, right, you have to have all the disciplines of marketing,

Greg Sarafin  50:42

any any, any CXO, that has a mature function that’s repeated over and over again, in industry is going to have a very defined path, right? Instead of skills they know they need to develop in order to have the licence to hold the role. The problem is, our roles have lived as the bolt ons. So the skills we’ve developed have been within the box. That’s right, mostly sales or marketing, go to market and sales, a lot of relationship handling and no model. And then it’s a lot of complexity, navigation. Right. So you’re going to need somebody that has that, but then also is good with the capital agenda. Financial chops has financial chops has go to market shops. Yeah. Right. You have to understand how marketing function works exactly. Has product chops. Yes. So it’s a weird technical acumen, you have to understand your product, whether it’s a tech product, or it’s a farmer product, or it’s an automobile, it doesn’t matter. You have to know your product. You have to know how to make good capital decisions. You have to you have to be immensely commercial. If you if you want to do really cool orchestrated deals, you don’t just use a typical bilateral agreements that are, you know, papered over every day, right? You’re creating unique contracting mechanisms, in some cases in order to bring five partners together to do something that’s never been done before.

Vince Menzione  52:04

So creativity, orchestration skills, martial skills, are you mentioned being a connector, right part of our conversation,

Greg Sarafin 52:11

and you need to be a leader without without crossing your swim lane?

Vince Menzione  52:19

Influence strategy?

Greg Sarafin  52:20

Yeah, exactly. You need to be an influence leader. Because you don’t run the business units. That’s right. You aren’t a strategy officer of the company. You’re not CEO. You’re not, you’re not the head of sales. You’re not data product, but you need to influence all of them to bring them together to make the right capital allocation strategies, the right product fit strategies, the right go to market strategies, all those so that’s the skill set you need. And then you also need to be good operator, because these functions can be ruinously expensive, because they’re so these processes again, we’re not gonna get into the detail the processes, but when you look at the intercompany, intercompany processes, it’s brutal, absolutely brutal. So what we did in my phone, you

Vince Menzione  53:10

have to have the accountability for the financial account, and you need

Greg Sarafin  53:13

to report, here’s the cost. Here’s the cost that is related directly to selling cost the sales, the s&s GNA. And then here’s all the other costs, that’s not really s, it’s GA. But if you don’t, if you don’t do it, you don’t get the motion. That’s right. Right. And that is, you know, what we call that partner ops. Now, partner Ops is can be really expensive. So what we did is we said, look, we’re going to change partner ops to a shared service, we’re gonna move it offshore, we’re gonna put a tech stack on it, Microsoft, ServiceNow and UiPath. In our case, we’re going to automate it. And you’re not going to you’re not gonna have people doing these roles you’re gonna have you’re gonna buy services. And then we’ll have teams that serve, you know, in our case, now, about 150 relationships are being served by this, this partner ops centre, that Kelly strap in my partner obsoleted runs for us brilliantly. She’s built this thing over seven years. It’s incredible.

Vince Menzione  54:08

And they’re going across all the business partnerships within every partnership

Greg Sarafin  54:13

we have from the largest, down to the tiny, longtail ones that are important to somebody for some specific reason, are all supported. And last year, the cost of partner operations was less than 10 basis points. It’s down although revenue that we generated from the partnerships wild as well. And if I guarantee you 11 billion, was it, no, no, no, no, last year eight, and this year, closing in on 10. So like, so, first thing I say is look, I’ve separated cost of sales from indirect cost, indirect costs, were driving it to zero 10 basis points. Any questions? No. Okay, good partner ups. We’re done. Now let’s talk about the cost of sales. Okay, so, and this is the really interesting kind of So in this what I really do want to share with your audience, right,

Vince Menzione  55:01

so this is the piece that I want to dive in I know specifically for our community ultimate partner experience community on it’s like, how did you what were the steps you took? Yeah. Okay,

Greg Sarafin  55:11

so first thing I did is I said, Look,

Vince Menzione  55:16

if you’re part of the movement, you know, I have a very strong point of view. I’ve sat on both sides of the table for over 30 years now. I build growth through partnerships and PC, internet, cloud, mobile AI, marketplaces, and more. I’ve also seen the demise of organisations that are resistant to change. I’m part of the community’s special interest groups and associations. And I don’t see one place that mirrors the ecosystem and brings it all together. You see, I see a vibrant world where hyperscalers, builders ISV, sellers, s eyes MSPs and other partners come together to spark the ecosystems growth. I’ve talked to many of you. And what I continually hear is, it’s noisy, I don’t know whom to listen to, and where to go. There’s a massive opportunity, but I’m not sure how to get there. Well, you’ve been heard, we’re getting ready to open the doors early in a pilot this new experience. We want this to be your place with your feedback and participation. If you’re a builder, and innovator or leader, visit our website. Alright, we’re we’re getting close to time. Although we can go on all day here. I have a favourite question. I love to ask, okay, to my guests. You are hosting a dinner party. And you can cook this dinner party could be anywhere in the world, we were talking about some great locations just before. And you can invite any three guests from the present? Or the past. It’s got this amazing dinner party. We’ve talked about where you’re going to have it next to as well. Okay. Whom would you invite Greg? And why?

Greg Sarafin  56:59

That’s a great question. I’ll actually answer it with. I could go back in history, but I’ll pretend it’s not magic, right? If I was going to spend time with three people who, who I think would be fun to be with and also do challenge my thinking and just create a really engaging evening. I would probably I would probably do Bezos. I would do gamebird on the Emperor down. He’s the leader of the IAQ movement. He’s also named Beth Jeff Bezos. And he’s, I heard Lex Friedman interview him recently. And I’m like, Wow, that guy just changed how I think about things. I need to listen to that. And then there was another there was another one that now I gotta go on my phone and look it up because I’m terrible with names. But there’s another one who I also heard on elects. I guess I’m advertising extra now. Sorry.

Vince Menzione  58:06

That’s okay. As long as you listen to The Ultimate Partner and Lex Friedman, I do.

Greg Sarafin  58:13

The other one, the other guest wrote this unbelievable article in the it was nature. Last year that connects right down to quantum and particle physics, all the way through chemistry to biology to evolution and explains at the quantum physics level. How it is all connected, which no one is like it just is absolutely no one’s ever. I never understood how those things they were always so siloed to me. And here we go. Lee Cronin, Lee Cronin, Lee Cronin Cronin never heard of the person before. It was a three hour three and a half hour podcast. Wow, I listened to it twice. I never do that. Do it twice. And you know what I like? I like people that rewire my, my thinking. And those those two in particular rewire my thinking and Bezos just because his thing I mean, think about thinking, his clarity of thought, when you see him, you know, do a podcast or whatever his clarity of thought his way of seeing through complexity. And then to get people around him to like, it’s absolutely stunning. It’s absolutely so yeah, it would be those three now if he asked me a year from now, it might be different three. I mean, I could name some of these AI experts out there like the like the NYU guy who’s met with goon he’s another one I don’t know about him. Like, there’s so many awesome people out there that can really impact you, and how you think and expand your world and That’s to me. That’s what’s into me. We’re kind of doing this today, right? We’re love this. You and I are riffing off each other. We’re sharing experiences and so forth like this is this is the great thing about humanity to me. Exactly. And this is why we’re people, you know, so I told you I’m retiring from me why? Because I’ve hit the age barrier there. But I’m like, I’m the best version of me I’ve ever been. I’m not done. No.

Vince Menzione  1:00:23

I feel like more years, by the way, and I’ve got a similar age. So you know, I’m still I’m still going, I

Greg Sarafin  1:00:29

gotta love it. Because you know what? When you when you work, and you are you are gifted, the gift that we have of working with great companies, great people. Like you’re just constantly being fed oxygen. It’s great. I love it. I love it.

Vince Menzione  1:00:45

So you’ve just been an awesome guest. I love this deep dive we did today that we will deep dive in with Yeah, we’re gonna we’re gonna have a lot of fun with this. Okay, so any, let’s just because we’re in, we’re at the end of q1 of 2024. Ready, like Xander is blonde, just blowing by any last tips, advice, words of wisdom, you’d be shared so much here today, for our listeners and viewers out there that you would like to share?

Greg Sarafin  1:01:14

Yeah, I mean, like, It’s my biggest struggle. And the thing that I always work on is you’ve got to, you do need to take care of yourself professionally, you’ve got to, you got to be at least somewhat politically astute and thoughtful. But to me, if you’re creating value, and you’re not just creating value, but you’re creating new types of value in whatever function you’re in, you’re innovating to new types of value. That to me is I don’t care what you do, you’re going to be successful. And you’re going to enjoy it. Yeah. Joe so important. So so that that, to me, is what I always try to focus on is, it’s not about me, it’s about me, because it’s me, I live in me, but it’s, it’s about the value. And then it’s about bringing your teams and your stakeholders into that value creation. And then, I mean, my best moments are when I’m with my team members, and we’re discussing some idiotic thing that, you know, one of our partners is suggesting we do or as you know, I mean, but then to have that interaction, like we’re having right and just to create new and be innovative and create new ways of dealing with a different type of insanity is to me My favourite thing to do. And I, I have a great team that I do that with every day, and we just have a lot. We have a lot of fun. I love

Vince Menzione  1:02:40

hearing that. Bringing him along on the value creation journey.

Greg Sarafin  1:02:45

We’re all in. We’re all doing it. We’re all we’re all leading in.

Vince Menzione  1:02:48

Greg, I want to thank you again. You’ve been awesome. Just been great to spend time with you. And fun. Yeah, it’s been a lot of fun. And I’ll come back anytime right here. Look at this scenery back here for dip later. Awesome. Thank you for watching and listening The Ultimate Partner with our amazing guest, Greg Serafin. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of ultimate guide to partner online and Ultimate Partner.com. If you liked this episode, I’d be thrilled if you left us up to a five star review on either Apple or Spotify. This helps us to continue to feature amazing guests. Also, please check out subscribe to our new YouTube channel, ultimate Bart? We’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Guide to partners